


Retelling

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [116]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, Character Study, Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:35:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26436538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: There's a story in these marks.  It could have ended very differently.
Relationships: Hardcase/CC-3636 | Wolffe
Series: Soft Wars [116]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 29
Kudos: 345





	Retelling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Groovymarlin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Groovymarlin/gifts).



> Been sitting on this one a while (for those of you who follow me on Tumblr, remember back when I pinned that one post of Hardcase and tattoos? Yeah, since then). It finally wandered out from under the sofa and I snagged it.

“Which did you get first?”

His back is a riot of color, from low on his collar to high on his forearms, to a careful line above his knees just inside where his PT shorts would sit. Blue dominates, unsurprisingly: a dawn-sky gradient of painted shades. But there are green vines and orange-gold mandalas sweeping over his shoulders, down his chest. Blood red chevrons arrow along his ribs, a tight knot of void-black birds dotted with starlight take flight inside one elbow, a gray spray of ocean waves foam in the other. Lines and crosshatches and curves flow with his muscles instead of around them, interlocking as if they’d always meant to be there.

Wolffe finds something new every time he looks.

Hardcase is an encompassing, comforting weight slung diagonal across Wolffe’s chest and hips. Wolffe should feel trapped. He doesn’t, can’t.

It’s just unnatural, how someone as big as Hardcase can still never register as a threat to him. It shouldn’t work.

“First what?” Hardcase mutters. He’s slumped where he fell, nose crushed to the pillow and unbothered. He’s long kicked the blanket away. Even as the night got cooler and goosepimples huddled in the dip of his back, he’s far too content to move. It would take more than a chill to budge him like this, a worn-out, wrung-dry satisfied. Wolffe feels a stab of pride.

“Ink.” Wolffe rolls the base of his palm across geometric laddering marching down the left side of his shoulder. This cover-up is particularly skillful: he can’t see the scar at all until he feels it. The proof of Hardcase’s survival is invisible, buried beneath the color of him living out loud.

Hardcase shifts just enough to press a dry kiss to Wolffe’s bare shoulder.

“Face,” he says. “But that’s not the most important.”

They mean something, every one. Every line a story, and Hardcase never hides his depths. Some the stories are clear: across the meat of one thigh a silhouette of a carbine rests propped up against a Z6, crossed dual pistols and a modded LR handgun framing. Most stories are not.

Torrent colors march along his forehead and spills out from his lips. Torrent colors, his first tattoo a public statement when every one that followed was tucked neatly away under uniform. And yet it isn’t the most important.

Their fingers entwine. Hardcase’s ribs sear hot against Wolffe’s knuckles.

Five little dots sit invisible craters high under Hardcase’s arm. Four points to a square, one in the center. Not ink. Scars.

“They said cadets would go away sometimes,” Hardcase says, as though the story he tells is someone else’s. “The broken ones. They’d said they’d go away, come back fixed. And you’d never know they were broken. They liked to say it as threats, to make us do better. Or just because.”

Or just because.

Cody bans very few people from Concord Dawn. He will not be a dictator he’s said, he’s proclaimed, he’s begged his brothers to ensure. He will not gatekeep his brothers’ homes. Cody’s dislike is not reason enough, and he’s made sure they all know it.

Kote maintains bans only for those who have harmed Vode, for those who would harm them again.

There are less than a score Cuy’val Dar allowed on Concord Dawn. There is only one Kaminoan.

“I hit benchmark,” he says and Wolffe knows he did so much more than that. Hardcase excelled. It is a tragedy of their time that, until Rex, no one would tell him that. “But the squad still. Worried.”

Wolffe kisses him.

The angle is strange, the stretch unnatural, the grip of his hands quietly desperate. No more, Wolffe wants to say; he asked and doesn’t want to know.

But he asked, and Hardcase is only good at secrets in shell.

Wolffe bites at his lips, reaches for distraction that doesn’t come.

He’s fine, Hardcase says, he’s here, he’s fine. But there was a moment, a memory spoken into being, when that could have changed. Wolffe would have never even known to miss him.

“I shouldn’t have asked,” Wolffe snarls apology, and Hardcase’s laugh is comfort without mocking.

“It’s a happy story,” he says, and his stories always are. He won’t hold sadness on his skin. “The good things happened, the bad things were only maybes. And we all came home.”

We. Five dotted scars, four points to a square, one protected inside. Five boys in a squad who all came home.

“Zeke,” Hardcase says and their fingers brush a point. “Clanky. Longshot. Flashpoint.” The center. “Hardcase.” He smiles. “So if I ever went away, no matter how I came back they’d know it was me.”

Five boys in a squad who had nothing of themselves to give, and so gave promises.

“It’s a happy story,” he says, and Wolffe disagrees.

“It’s a story that ended happily.” And that isn’t the same. He tugs and Hardcase comes to him, covers him, anchors him kisses him past and through the helpless rage.

“It hasn’t ended,” Hardcase breathes truth between their lips. “That’s the point. It’s a story that’s here now, me and you. And it keeps going.”

Because Flashpoint and Longshot use their range more than the Wolfpack does. Because Clanky knows the honey harvesting schedule better than they do. Because Zeke still periodically gets the urge to see if Wolffe is still strong enough to protect their Hardcase, and he’s been thrown through the hedgerow more times than any of the Rogers are happy with.

Because this story hasn’t ended, and the next new lines of ink will test the edges of cover where they once hid. They’ll spiral out their stories, and that they’re there at all means the stories are happy ones.

A wolf, Hardcase thinks, he says, for next time. He smiles as breezily as though it is someone else’s story, an impact softened with distance. A wolf, he muses, remembered on his skin, over his pulse.

Wolffe rolls them over and kisses him.


End file.
